1) Orange and Manly Mike Pompeo make the withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in 2020.
2) Agreement provides for our complete withdrawal by 5/1/ 21.
3) The agreement gets some but not that much public attention. Public opinion on all sides supports us leaving.
4) The administration and the Pentagon have no viable contingency planning for the circumstances of an immediate and complete collapse of the Afghan army as soon as we left.
5) The administration is slow walking or no walking the visa process for the Afghans who helped us thanks mostly to evil Stephen Miller.
6) Orange gets bounced on his ear last November and was focusing on trying to stay in office legally before and illegally after the election.
7) Biden inherits this shit sammy on 1/20.
8) The new administration does realize that the May withdrawal date is unworkable and pushes it back to the end of August.
9) The new administration otherwise chooses to comply with the agreement again with zero planning about what to do if there is an immediate collapse.
10) If the new administration had appreciated these circumstances they could have further delayed our departure to the end of the year and made proper plans.
11) Biden who wants to get out as fast as Orange did, doesn’t appreciate the risk of an immediate collapse, and there are no such plans developed.
12) As the withdrawal date comes closer, the Afghan government and military start to panic. The administration had or should have had intelligence on the situation. They either did have that intelligenve and ignored it, or it wasn’t given. In any event, a huge failure their part.
13) The circumstances of how the military conducted the withdrawal would have been the same in May as they were in August. In other words if the Afghan military collapsed, this was bound to happen. It wasn’t a special plan drawn up just for Biden.
14) Biden bears the brunt of the blame for what happened. He didn’t have to remain a member of the blind mice club, He could have and should have had contingency planning for what happened occurring as fast as it did. He also could and should have delayed our pullout until these things were addressed. It happened on his watch and he is the captain of the ship of state. Like Orange before him, he was likely focusing more on domestic agenda items to the exclusion of this problem. Orange gets a strong assist on the goal though. Just wanted to get out, also didn’t give a shit about the consequences and just handed the mess over with no transition or planning. He was to busy whining about stolen elections and trying to concoct a plan to steal it himself.
15) it’s almost a miracle that so far no Americans have been killed and the embassy was securely and safely evacuated. We are also getting a lot of Afghans out of there. If he pulls this off, Biden will deserve credit for it. I think we all hope and pray that it continues.
Biden had good intel from his general's and proceeded anyway. Who is going to pull out soldiers before the civilians and the afgans that assisted us were taken out first?
However, if you really think Orange would have stayed past 5/1, that bridge in Brooklyn can be yours.
They also made zero plans to expedite visas for the Afghans. Disgraceful. They would have just left them there. In fact, Miller was actively trying to block that process.
I am under no illusions about Joe’s ultimate responsibilities for all of this mess. But it amazes me the lengths that the MAGA people will go to deny and misdirect with regard to Orange’s role. You do know that two things can be true? And they both are here.
I do think Trump would have pulled out, but quickly reversed course when the crap starting spraying. Day 3 of the Taliban take over should have been Biden's sign to go on the offensive again.
worse than Joe. And I firmly believe that Miller and he would have abandoned our Afghan allies to their fate. Again, just my partisan view, but if you will remember the moron actually said the Taliban would fight the terrorists for us.
And while Joe scored the shit sammy goal, Orange gets the assist for setting or not setting it all up.
the SIV from 100 to 800 per month!
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Everything we're seeing and hearing right now has to do with getting Afghani citizens out of harms way...something that Donald Trump wanted nothing to do with...
It was not an 'oversight'...is was intentional.
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I agree that Orange wouldn’t have given two shits or even one shit what happened to our allies that the Taliban will slaughter. It’s to Joe’s credit that he does. It still doesn’t excuse how he went about this. And, Stephen Miller should roast in hell, that asswipe .
to shoot at Americans if they got out by May 1st...I have a few questions about what Joe Biden & Co. had to do from Jan. 20th, on...
>What did they have to do in order to get the SIV process reduced from ~13 months to something close to 8 months (i.e. Aug/Sept)?...May 1st was a pipe dream.
>How many SIVs could they get, and what was the process for getting approval for 'a lot more' of them?...this is a nation of laws, and I have read that Biden needed a supplemental amendment to a Security Bill that involved the Shaheem-Ernst Bill to protect Afghan Allies through the SIV Program...this tells me it's not a "flip the switch" decision to grease the skids for tens of thousands of Afghanis to be released into "U.S. custody"...again, a fine point that Trump either forgot about, or knew about when he pushed for May 1st (or earlier).
>Since Trump did all he could to keep the Afghanis out, how much time has it taken Biden, et al, to arrange for other countries to take on Afghani refugees (not just SIV-qualified people)...again, not an afternoon's worth of phone calls...likely a time consuming negotiation occupying a lot of folks in the State Dept...thousands of refugees are necessarily not SIV qualified, btw...a fact not lost on those taking them in, and a cause for hesitancy (time loss).
>How long did it take to get a 'gutted' State Department (thanks to Trump and his loyalist, Rex Tillerson) to get back to a degree of functionality that allowed for coordinated planning and effective agreements with those countries...recall that there was zero transition assistance.
There's obviously more that bears on the problem...and I'm sure that there have been mistakes by Biden and his team in this chaotic period...but as you've noted, there's no doubt that it's an "All Hands on Deck" effort by them...all we can do is pray they get tens of thousands out...oh, just heard that they're 'mobilizing' commercial airlines to lend a hand...so there's that as well.
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us there, for all intents and purposes, forever.
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We await the Board's hand wringers to remind us that Biden's mismanagement and hastiness to leave Afghanistan has forever shamed America, demanding that Biden resign from office
It would be easier to acknowledge their justified criticism, if these same posters had applied that same scrutiny and objectivity in the past, and voiced concern (or shame) regarding:
1) Our abrupt abandonment of the Kurds (see attached below)
2) January 6th
3) Having a President govern by twitter for 4 years, and acting like a petulant spoiled teenager
4) Managed to lead the world in COVID cases and deaths (3k/day) in our flatfooted response/preparation to the COVID pandemic. ["That was the China Virus, Conor., WHO gave us bad intelligence. Not Trump's fault that we were caught flatfooted"]
5) Having a presidential candidate who acted in concert with Russia to interfere in 2016 election, and then obstructed the DOJ investigation
6) Having a US President endeavor to extort Ukraine by holding Congressional approved military aid in exchange for Ukraine fabricating stories that Bidden was under investigation in Ukraine
7) Having a US President install a policy to separate Latino children from their parents as a deterrence to seek refugee status in the United States
Gag me with their faux outrage and newly found love for humanity.
Link: We have your backs, Kurds!
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promised to govern.
It’s not like the argument is his failure was NOT to do what Orange would have done, which was nothing. It’s that he DID do exactly what Orange have done. In other words, to get out of there precipitously without thinking it through, or if he did think about it, not appreciating fully the risks and providing for them.
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This chapter will undermine public and global confidence in Biden. How much? Time will tell.
But, I disagree that he is handling it like Trump.
Trump would have cut a deal with the Taliban to build a Trump Hotel in Kabul.
Trump wouldn't have given two shits about rescuing Afghan friends or Americans for that matter, placing all the blame on the Afghan leadership for folding.
Trump would have relabeled all the folks who helped us for 20 years as "terrorists" - unworthy of our help.
Trump would have sold our Afghan friends' women and children as sex slaves on the black market, pocketing the proceeds in an offshore account that is protected by "executive privilege."
And then Trump would remind is about hw great he was for getting America out of Afghanistan.
and in lying. But the execution of the order to leave that led to the collapse was a mirror of how Orange would have done it. Do it fast and don’t fully consider the possible consequences.
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No reasonable person can watch Joe’s befuddled reading of Rice’s script on the giant teleprompter and feel anything but sympathy for him. King Lear had more wits.
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